by Rudy Rucker
“He’s frightened,” said Bruegel, composing himself. “He worries that because of Michelangelo he cannot paint.” Saying this he looked within himself. He was far from frightened. He’d never felt more ready to paint in his life.
“De Vos is a stupid pig,” said Ortelius. “I’ve never liked him either.”
“My cousin works in an inn near here,” said Scipio Fabius. “Let us repair there for refreshment.”
The inn had a pleasant courtyard with leafy vines and the open sky above. Bruegel, Ortelius, and Fabius sat comfortably drinking fine Ceylonese tea and eating a flat round yellow cake that Fabius’s cousin brought out. Soon the cousin sat down to join them, and the four of them ate the whole little cake a slice at time; it tasted of eggs, nutmeg, and vanilla bean. While Fabius and his cousin conversed in Italian, Bruegel and Ortelius talked Flemish.
“So let me ask again what you think of Michelangelo, Peter,” said Ortelius.
“The work is sublime,” said Bruegel with a smile. “I’m lucky to have seen it. I can spend a lifetime learning from what I saw in the chapel.” He didn’t know Ortelius well enough to say more.
“I’m very excited,” said Ortelius. “Never before have I so clearly seen Man’s place in the cosmos. We’re like the scale mark on the corner on a map; the unit by which God measures His creation.”
“Perhaps that’s too much to expect of us,” said Bruegel slowly. A swarm of little insects hovered over the crumbs of their cake, somehow reminding him of the crowd before St. Peter’s. Tossed about by the weakest breeze. “Every creature is a part of the whole,” he added. “The butterfly grows his wings, the bird weaves her nest, I’ll paint my pictures—de Vos feeds the worms in his head. Perhaps in God’s eyes we’re all equal. We don’t need to be classic and noble, and neither does our art.”
“Well said,” said Ortelius with a thoughtful smile. “And what are you painting?”
“I’m nearly finished with a landscape that our host Clovio will sell to a patron. De Vos is to add some figures to it. We’re working for our room and board.”
“De Vos is fortunate to have you as a traveling companion,” said Ortelius.
“And I less fortunate,” said Bruegel. “I tire of his folly.”
“That was an ugly thing he said about Michelangelo,” said Ortelius. “Whether it be true or not. The great old man still lives in Rome, you know. He’s turned his hand to architecture. He’s designing a dome for St. Peter’s.”
“The endless labor of the Tower of Babel,” said Bruegel slowly. A lovely idea was dawning on him. “I promised to paint a miniature for Clovio, and now I have the theme. The Tower of Babel! I’ve seen it here today. I’ll make the smallest painting of the biggest church. Massimino!”
At the sound of the Italian word, Fabius got back into the conversation, and they limped along in Latin for a while. After lunch, Ortelius urged Bruegel to come visit him at his lodgings near the Colosseum.
“It’s the Albergo della Putti,” said Ortelius. “Think of me if you need anything at all. If you’re short of money, you can sell me some of your drawings and I’ll resell them for engraving in Antwerp. Perhaps a landscape with something classical in the sky. I’ll be here for another twelve days, scouring the city for maps, coins, medals, and antiques. And then I get a ship home.”
“I’d thought you dealt solely in maps,” said Bruegel, regarding Ortelius with interest. He’d never realized before that Abraham could help his career.
“I have a wide range of interests,” said Ortelius. “I deal, I trade, I collect. I have some cabinets at home to display my favorite pieces. I call it my museum. I know all sorts of people, and reselling some drawings for you would be no trouble at all.”
De Vos didn’t return to Clovio’s that day, nor the next. Bruegel was worried enough to ask the others to make inquiries, but Clovio and Giampietrino didn’t seem very interested in getting de Vos back. His absence meant one less mouth to feed, and less noise in the studio. Quite early the following morning, Bruegel finished his part of the landscape painting. It hadn’t turned out at all well, but he didn’t want to work on it any more. It was high time for de Vos to show up and do his part, to slap on the stupid whey-faced Apostles, and damned if Bruegel was going to do that himself. It was time to start something new, to start the Tower of Babel—if only he could think of the right way to do it. He hadn’t told Clovio about his plan yet. Later that morning, he walked over to Ortelius’s inn, hoping his friend could help him find their fellow Low-Lander. And he was eager to discuss the possibility of selling Ortelius a couple of drawings.
The Albergo della Putti was a louche little dive with a tavern at street level and perhaps a dozen rooms upstairs. Apparently Ortelius wasn’t as wealthy as Bruegel had begun to hope. The barkeep, a plump beardless youth with red lips, introduced himself as Beppo. Beppo’s breath was sweetened by a clove that he jiggled with his tongue as he talked. He smiled and shook his head when Bruegel asked for Ortelius. He said something in Italian, but Bruegel couldn’t make out what it was. As he spoke, Beppo made ambiguous rubbing motions. Was he asking if Bruegel wanted to take a bath?
Bruegel left the unwholesome atmosphere of the inn and continued down the streets to the Colosseum, which he hadn’t yet seen. It was love at first sight. His eyes had seldom been so happy. He spent the rest of the day exploring the ancient stadium, sketching its arcades of arches, nosing around its subterranean halls, drawing it from below, then clambering up the fins of the inner buttresses and drawing it from above. Although St. Peter’s was the underlying inspiration for his Tower of Babel, it was the Colosseum that gave him the actual image he’d use to start the work. He stayed with the Colosseum till dusk, and walked back towards Clovio’s through dark bustling streets with his new picture like a beacon in his mind.
He’d quite forgotten about de Vos and Ortelius, and when he bumped into de Vos in the street, it took him a second to connect back to reality. De Vos was just crossing the square by the flower market, carrying a loaf of bread under one arm.
“Martin!”
“Oh, hello, Peter. Are you angry with me?”
“Not at the moment. I’m glad to see the priests didn’t catch you. Where have you been sleeping?”
“My little friend from the flower market has been letting me bed down on the straw in her stall. If I play my cards right, she may join me there one night soon.”
“A beautiful dream, I’m sure,” said Bruegel. “What about coming back to Clovio’s and finishing your part of our picture?”
“I can’t paint,” said de Vos wretchedly.
“You can’t paint like Michelangelo,” said Bruegel, getting annoyed all over again. “But you can damned well paint some figures onto this piece-of-shit picture we signed up to do. I’ve finished my part on it, Martin. If I had my true wishes, I’d start afresh on the other side of the panel and do it right this time, but Clovio wants the damned thing sold this week, and with my name on it. And meanwhile he wants me to start painting the miniature to pay for our trip to the Sistine Chapel. You’ve got to do the figures now.”
“It’s all right if I paint badly?” said de Vos softly.
“The picture’s a complete botch,” said Bruegel. “I mixed my oils too fat in places and they ran; I had to touch it up all over with flat egg-tempera patches; it’s like a poxed trull with a painted face. Especially if you see it from the edge in the light. But Clovio claims it doesn’t matter, he says this particular patron has no eye and that nobody visits his collection. To tell you the truth, it makes me sick to think of signing the thing, but Clovio says the time’s run out and I owe him the favor. You can think of it this way if you like, Martin: the poorer your work, the worse Bruegel looks.”
“Say, I like that,” said de Vos, cheering up. The old smile lit up his snub-nosed face. “All right, Peter, I’m coming with you. It’ll be nice to have a chance to get a bath.” Bruegel briefly thought of the unsavory youth at Ortelius’s inn, but he certainly w
asn’t going to mention this to de Vos. No yelling or arguing for now. All he wanted to think about was his vision of the Tower of Babel, the plan as nicely balanced in his mind as a stack of delicate plates.
Clovio seemed happy enough to have de Vos back, now that it was time for the young Low-Lander to finish the Tiberias picture. At dinner, Bruegel told Clovio about his plans for the miniature. It would more than redeem the botched panel. Clovio was delighted at Bruegel’s audacity in wanting to creating a Tower of Babel in so tiny a form. The peculiar Francesca was excited about the idea too and she even got out the family’s heavy printed Bible to read them the Tower of Babel story in Latin. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves,” repeated Francesca when she was done, and then she spun around the room chanting the word “Babel.” De Vos and Giampietrino jumped up and spun with her, the cook hoarsely shouted “Babel,” and for a few minutes everyone was in a festive humor.
The next morning Bruegel selected one of the newly polished ivory blanks, one of a goodly size, and borrowed a few of Clovio’s miniature brushes. The smallest brush had only three hairs. He decided to paint in watercolors, in fact he’d use the glue-based pigments, called distemper paint, that he brought along in his satchel. This way there wouldn’t be any bad surprises, like with the Landscape with Christ Appearing to the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias, which de Vos was busy making even worse.
Bruegel spent the first day painting a spidery outline of the shapes he wanted: a tower like a broken cone, a harbor on the right, a city on the left, and some figures in the foreground. On the second day he got down to the real work. Rather than executing any additional preliminary steps he painted alla prima, with no underpainting, working to immediately bring the picture into its finished form, one feature at a time. The more he painted, the more clearly he could see his vision of the Tower of Babel. It was as if the paintbrush were scraping the frost away from a clouded windowpane. On the third day the tower’s galleries were finished. Where the Colosseum had two unbroken galleries, Bruegel’s Tower had seven. On the fourth day Bruegel filled in a wonderful ruin for the Tower’s top, and set men to work among the Tower’s galleries. On the fifth day he shaded the hills of the background landscape, let a cloud drift across part of the Tower, and fleshed out the tiny figures in the foreground: a king and his servants. To Bruegel’s delight, the king seemed to be none other than Cardinal Farnese: fat, lustful, and greedy as life, though his face was no larger than the head of a pin. On the sixth day boats appeared in the harbor, red roofs covered the houses of the city—and on the seventh day the picture was done. Bruegel felt as happy as he’d ever been.
“A little world,” said Clovio, who’d been savoring Bruegel’s progress. “This one, I’ll keep.” He turned to de Vos, who’d just finished up his work as well. “As for the Tiberias, well, you boys are still learning. In any case I’m quite sure the patron will take it. He’s thickheaded. The main thing is that your work here is finished and tomorrow you can continue on your way. It’s been getting a little crowded. Though, Peter, if you want to come back and work on another miniature sometime that would be fine. Maybe we could do one together.”
De Vos was downcast at getting no praise from the Master, and now Giampietrino began chaffing him about his awkward, weakly limned figures, which sat upon the ungainly landscape as if pasted there. Bruegel tried to say a few nice things to de Vos, but it was hard not to just keep going back to stare at his little Tower of Babel some more. There was a near-perfect match between his vision and the painted image. In fact the image was better than the vision, thanks be to God. The little ships bobbing in the port looked so inviting.
Bruegel had learned that Rome had a port, a few miles to the east. Why not go there and take a ship to the tip of Italy’s boot? All afternoon he weighed the thought in his mind, though without telling the sulky de Vos. Perhaps it was time for a parting of the ways.
Clovio served them a fine farewell dinner with roast pigeons, a cornmeal mush, and a sauce of port wine and porcini mushrooms. As on the first night, de Vos drank to excess, but this time Francesca stayed warily out of his reach. She was very taken with the Tower of Babel, and she bestowed many lingering smiles upon Bruegel. An hour later, the house was quiet and de Vos and Bruegel were safe in their guest room, getting in bed by candlelight. The evening seemed to have ended without disaster. But just then there was a delicate scamper of footsteps and a little note slid under their door. De Vos snagged it.
He was drunk enough that he had to squint one eye shut in order to read. It was in Latin. “I tremble,” he intoned. “Come to me. Francesca.” De Vos gave a low, gloating chuckle. “You hear that, Peter? She wants me after all.”
“Perhaps the note was for me,” said Bruegel mildly. “Not that I’d go to her. She’s half-mad.”
“Mad with love,” said de Vos, already leaning over the basin and washing his face and his private parts. “This will teach that fool Clovio a lesson for belittling my work. I’ll swive his daughter.”
“Don’t, Martin.” Bruegel began inching towards him.
“Jealous, eh? Yes, you bungled the landscape and sabotaged my picture, but you’re not going to cheat me out of my little roll in the hay.” De Vos raised a fist in the air. “If you take one more step towards me, I’ll lay you out flat, Bruegel.”
“You’re serious?”
“I am.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” Bruegel pulled his breeches back on, laced up his shoes, put on his jerkin, and picked up his satchel.
“You want to come to her room?” asked the befuddled de Vos.
“No, I’m leaving Clovio’s. I don’t want to be here for the shit storm. Wait.” Bruegel found a scrap of paper and wrote a brief farewell note of thanks that he put on his pillow.
“Should—should I come with you?”
“No,” said Bruegel firmly. “You’re going to Francesca.”
“Right.” De Vos’s familiar smile lit his face. “Good-bye then, Peter.”
Once again Bruegel felt pity for de Vos—but enough was enough. “Good-bye, old friend. I’ll see you back in Antwerp, God willing.”
So Bruegel let himself out of Clovio’s front door as de Vos padded off down Clovio’s hall. Just as Bruegel got down to the street he heard Francesca start screaming. Chuckling despite himself, Bruegel headed towards the Colosseum. He’d sell Ortelius a couple of drawings to get money for the rest of his trip.
The tavern at the Albergo della Putti was quiet, with a few men drinking and talking intimately to each other. Ortelius was nowhere to be seen. Bruegel addressed a muscular fellow with a cleft chin who was pouring out wine for the customers. “Abraham Ortelius,” said Bruegel, pointing towards the stairs. He attempted some words of Italian. “Paisano mio.”
The muscleman pursed his lips and said something incomprehensible about Ortelius, then gestured for Bruegel to go on up. “Stanza sette.” As a kindness he showed Bruegel the room number with his fingers. Seven.
Ortelius came to the door holding a little illuminated book of hours in one hand. “Ah, Peter. I’ve just finished my evening meditations.” But the book was a prop. Behind Ortelius the red-lipped barkeep sat on the edge of a disordered bed, his clothes askew. Beppo. Ortelius said something to him in Italian. The youth got to his feet and stood there pouting until Ortelius handed him a gold coin.
“You must be very lonely,” said Bruegel after Beppo had departed. It had occurred to him before that Ortelius might be a sodomist. “To seek out companions of this sort.”
“A sinful urge which I occasionally indulge,” said Ortelius. “I hope you don’t think the less of me. Nobody else in Antwerp knows of my vice.”
“Not your confessor?”
“To tell one of our Spanish priests that I’ve buggered an androgyne?” said Ortelius. “It would be an open death warrant. But here in Rome, yes, I’ve dared confess. The padre said lust is the least grievous of th
e seven sins, even if the lust is unnatural. I wish I could interest myself in women, but it doesn’t happen. Do you despise me much?”
“What you do with your cock is your own affair, Abraham,” said Bruegel, meaning it. He’d grown up on a farm, and nothing humans ever did could top the ribaldry of the pigs. “Stick it where you like—I’ll treat you the same as ever. It’s just a cock. Speaking of which, de Vos went after Clovio’s daughter tonight. I left just as matters came to a head. I’d like to catch a ship to Naples tomorrow.” Bruegel paused meaningfully. He sensed Ortelius would be all too glad to change the subject.
“And so you came to sell me some drawings,” filled in Ortelius eagerly. “Let’s have a look.”
Bruegel got out the sheaf of landscape drawings which hung heavy inside his coat. He didn’t want to part with his favorites, but he and Ortelius agreed on two likely candidates for resale to an engraver: landscapes of broad winding rivers amid mountains and plains.
“Not to tell you your own business, Peter,” said Ortelius, “but do you think you could add something classical to them? Then they’d sell better.”
“Here we go again,” said Bruegel, and took out his pen. A few minutes later he had drawn an embracing pair of statuelike figures in the corner of the first landscape’s sky. “You and Beppo,” said Bruegel. “See how he reaches between your legs?”
“Peter!”
Bruegel squinted at his drawing and made some tiny adjustments with his pen. “Ah, I had it wrong. It’s the lovely Psyche, borne aloft by Mercury’s strong arms. Now for the second one.” He scratched away in silence for a few minutes, happy to be drawing. “Recognize them?” he asked Ortelius when he was done.
“Daedalus and Icarus,” said Ortelius. “Icarus has flown too near the sun. His wings are melting.”
“Remember him when you’re back in chilly Antwerp, Abraham,” said Bruegel.
“Of course. Here.” Ortelius got out his purse and gave Bruegel some gold. “These pictures will move well. Do you want to spend the night? My bed’s wide enough. It’s quite safe—though I admire you, Peter, you’re not one of my types.” Ortelius made an extravagant hand gesture and babbled on. “There’s the alluring little hermaphrodites like Beppo, of course, but they’re not my true heart’s desire. What I’d really like would be a vigorous manly man. Older than I, tall and dark, passionate and strong enough to defend me as if I were his wife.”